


Fall

by RedHorse



Series: Sirry Ficlets [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Changing Dynamics, Gen, M/M, Post-War, Quidditch, small spaces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 19:03:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19774453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: Professional Quidditch hasn’t turned out all that well for Harry, who seems to have lost his edge after a bad accident last season. Sirius just wants him to feel safe.





	Fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Earth_Phoenix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Earth_Phoenix/gifts).



> Thanks to Wolf_of_Lilacs for beta reading! 
> 
> For Earth! Thanks for the prompt on my tumblr!
> 
> For the Sirry asks: Harry feeling sorry for himself has a special place he likes to go to be alone. Sirius knows how to cheer him up. ~~ Earth ❤️

_ Sirius _

After the game, Sirius watched Harry stalk off, expressionless, and he and Remus exchanged grim frowns. 

Teddy, exhausted from the experience of his first Quidditch match, had fallen asleep before he could witness his idol’s defeat.

Sirius carried him for Remus. He was small for nine, but still a dead weight, and Remus was sore and wincing from the full moon.

The kid felt nice, up against his shoulder, hair tangled with sweat. And—yes, definitely drooling slightly, creating a damp patch on Sirius’ shirt. He turned his head to kiss the flushed cheek, sticky from the chocolate frogs he’d been inhaling at the start of the game.

“Do you really think they’ll drop him?” Remus murmured. They had a private box that let them reach a controlled exit, neatly avoiding the reporters waiting to descend on any acquaintance of The Chosen One at all times. 

“Well,” Sirius said, shrugging, “he has been playing horribly ever since the fall.” And ever since the fall, Sirius had been hoping he’d quit. But quitting wasn’t in Harry, not at all. They’d have to fire him, and Sirius hoped they went ahead before he could humiliate himself much more.

They were at the temporary Floo, which, even to someone born and raised in the wizarding world, looked ridiculous to Sirius, a fireplace with a chimney to nowhere in the middle of a grassy meadow.

He waited for Remus to gather a handful of Floo powder before handing off Teddy. When the kid was settled in Remus’ arms, Sirius gave the soft blue hair a gentle pat, then on impulse patted Remus’ head too. His oldest friend rolled his eyes, but smiled.

“Look after him,” Remus called over his shoulder as he walked into the flames.

For some reason, these parting words left a lump in Sirius’ throat.

He knew where Harry would be. Some things hadn’t changed in ten years. But while ten years ago Sirius would have been rushing to Harry’s side, now he knew better. So, he waited. Waited until the field cleared, until everyone else who came for the Floo had used it, until the sky went tangerine with sunset. Then he called out his own destination and walked through.

Harry’s flat wasn’t ostentatious. Sirius had half-sincerely tried to talk him into at least a bit of luxury, but Harry hadn’t wanted frills. He’d wanted a homey feeling, Sirius knew, which was why he was totally unsurprised when Harry chose a cozy two-bedroom in an ancient and teetering wizarding high-rise that had the same basic architectural shortcomings of the Weasleys’. It was tucked between two blocks of Muggle London in wizarding space.

The tenants were all at least a hundred years old, except of course for Harry. Harry, who hadn’t wasted any time going to the place Sirius usually wouldn’t interrupt him: the hall closet.

But “usually” really meant “before the fall.” He wouldn’t have dreamed of it then. Wouldn’t have thought he’d known what to say or do—wouldn’t have wanted to intrude.

Would have felt a strange unease at the inappropriateness of going into a closet with Harry and closing the door. He’d played that game at Hogwarts.

But now, with that terrible event and its strangely wonderful aftermath behind him, he couldn’t stop himself from opening the door with only a single, soft knock to announce himself.

“May I…?” he asked the darkest part of the space where he knew Harry to be.

In answer, a socked foot crept into his line of vision, then a bent knee, then Harry’s face, leaned forward to blink at him.

“What are you…?”

Sirius said nothing, just kept a brow lifted, waiting for the answer to his question.

Harry slowly leaned back into invisibility.

“I guess so.”

Sirius closed the door, then made himself comfortable. That meant, in the narrow space, settling against the wall opposite Harry without crushing a stack of shrunken shoe boxes. He moved them over, thinking they looked like the little wooden Muggle blocks Harry had gotten for Teddy on his second birthday.

When the silence threatened to unnerve him, Sirius did what he couldn’t help doing in any crisis: he talked.

_ Harry _

“I remember my cell, you know,” Sirius said, deceptively cheerful. “Not the sort of thing you ever forget, I guess. I was there almost as long as you were with...them.” As always, his voice took on an icy quality at even passing mention of the Dursleys.

“I remember mine too,” Harry said. There was a spider’s web in one corner of the Dursleys’ cupboard that had thickened to a cobweb as dense as a sheet, and in it, the husk of a dragonfly was buried. Harry hadn’t seen the dragonfly as it must have once appeared, freshly caught in the lethal net. It must have been beautiful at first, jewel-bright, fighting hard. 

“I also remember certain rooms in Grimmauld Place,” Sirius added with less good humor. “I can’t forget them. They’re too often in my nightmares. But my cell—I don’t know. It wasn’t so bad, really. At least after a while, I knew what to expect.”

Harry shifted, trying to ease a pins-and-needles sensation in his foot. When he stretched his legs out into the space next to Sirius’, their ankles touched. Sirius’ foot twitched, but he didn’t move.

“That’s the thing about tight spaces,” Harry heard himself say. He hadn’t meant to speak but now the words tumbled out like he couldn’t stop them. “They’re—you know.” His cheeks were burning.

“Safe,” Sirius said softly. He splayed his hands over his knees. “I always close the door to my room. Sometimes I lock it twice, even when I’m home alone.”

Harry found himself nodding.

“But usually it’s because I’ve had a rotten day,” Sirius added. “What’s your excuse?” Sirius cocked an eyebrow in challenge.

Harry stared at him incredulously. Then one side of Sirius’ mouth slowly curled upward, and Harry huffed a short laugh. He bent his knee to make an effort at kicking Sirius’ legs, but Sirius raised his own foot and fended him off. Harry’s abs strained with the effort and also with laughter as they fenced awkwardly, Harry scooting closer so that when he finally found a gap in Sirius’ coverage, he caught him square in the hip with his heel.

Sirius yelped in surprise and caught Harry’s ankle, unthinking.

It had been a long time since Harry was wearing hand-me-downs that were too wide and also too short for him. But the cuff of his trousers was loose and had fallen back just enough that Sirius’ palm closed warmly over bare skin.

It could have been an innocent touch. But it carried an unmistakable charge that stopped Harry’s laughter and stole his breath too.

They stared at one another in the half-light. Sirius looked as shocked as Harry. Harry expected any moment for Sirius to let go of him, laugh, make a dumb joke. It was how moments like this one had ended before.

But Harry wasn’t sixteen, or even twenty. He was twenty-five, and Sirius had been someone he thought of as a friend for far more years than he’d thought of him as a strange kind of parent.

“You got me,” Harry said quietly. He was leaning back on his elbows but now he raised himself onto his hands, abs clenching, starting to feel some strain in the back of his thigh on the leg Sirius continued to hold.

“Do you remember—“

“Yes.” Harry’s voice was short, as it always came out at even roundabout reference to the fall.

“You were terrible at being on bedrest.” Sirius hadn’t asked a question, and yet—he was still touching Harry—which was a kind of question—

“Yes.” Harry was still staring at his own ankle, resting in Sirius’ grip.

Sirius’ thumb swept over the knobby spot above Harry’s foot and dug in inside his heel.

Harry wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold himself half-upright. His muscles were straining, spikes of pain flaring in the small of his back too. He wouldn’t have moved for the world.

“It’s alright to be afraid.” Sirius spoke matter-of-factly. He looked up through his eyelashes at Harry and Harry’s mouth went dry.

Harry’s breath hitched. He wasn’t sure he still knew what they were talking about.

Harry’s strength gave out without warning and he slumped back on his elbows.

Sirius let go of him at the same moment, jarred, and Harry’s foot hit the floor.

“Take your time in here,” Sirius murmured, getting to his knees and shuffling toward the door.

“Sirius,” Harry murmured, and Sirius froze but didn’t turn.

Then he reached for the door. “Take—the time you need,” he said shortly, and slipped out.


End file.
